Presidential candidate John McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate presents the Obama-Biden campaign with an unwelcome and unexpected challenge: How do you go after a 44-year-old mother of five without alienating the female voters you have spent the last week trying to win back? The answer so far: not very well. Minutes after the McCain campaign confirmed Friday that Palin would be the Republican’s vice presidential pick, Bill Burton, a spokesman for Democratic nominee Barack Obama, dismissed Palin as a lightweight. McCain, he said, had put “the former mayor of a town of 9,000, with zero foreign policy experience, a heartbeat away from the presidency.” Almost immediately, the Obama campaign seemed to reconsider its tough-guy approach. The Politico

A local union president slammed by Donald Trump on Twitter stood his ground Thursday, maintaining the president-elect gave false hope to hundreds of workers by inflating the number of jobs being saved at a Carrier Corp. factory in Indianapolis.